


Elijah Unplugged

by itstonedme



Category: Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: AU, M/M, crack!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 22:06:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/519998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itstonedme/pseuds/itstonedme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shameless product placement for nasal irrigation.  Originally posted on LJ February 2009 <a href="http://itstonedme.livejournal.com/17021.html#cutid1">here</a> with reader comments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Elijah Unplugged

"Uuhh-CHOO!"

Viggo slid the tissue box towards Elijah without interrupting his examination of the blues for three new book jackets they were working on.

"After you’re done," Elijah said, scrubbing his nose across a sweatered wrist, "I’ve got some paper stock samples for the…ahh..fuc….CHOO!"

" _Nostrovya_ ," Viggo mumbled, tapping the box. 

Elijah plucked a handful. "Unless you’re toasting my allergies, I think you mean _gesundheit_." He sneezed again, this time into the tissues. 

Viggo looked up, mildly sympathetic. 

"I’ll probably go another five or so,” Elijah waved off. “Save your breath." He sneezed again. "Maybe it’s not allergies. All I know is I sneeze too much, and I wake up all night because my fucking nose blocks up on whatever side I’m sleeping on. I hate it." He punctuated with another sneeze. 

"Okay," Viggo said, initialling the slip taped to the first cover and sliding it to one side. He reached down and pulled open the bottom drawer, removing a small rose-hued ceramic pot with a pour spout. "Take this." 

It was understood among all the staff at UberProse Publishing House that Viggo Mortensen, senior editor non pareil, was permanently and harmlessly screwy, although the possibility always existed that he could inflict damage or arrest, however unintentional. Therefore, it only followed that Elijah's brows should furrow as he accepted the offering and peered inside the small open top to discern what might be hiding there. Odds favored that it was something he might light and inhale, hopefully for medical purposes and likely not in the presence of someone like his mom. If it was something that might help to open his nasal passages, he was willing to try.

Viggo was busily rooting around the bottom of a baggie. "Here," he said, grabbing a tissue to wrap what looked like a chunk of pink quartz and thrusting it toward Elijah. "Stick this in it, fill it with water and let it sit. Before you go to bed, tip your head over the sink," and Elijah's head tilted to one side, mirroring Viggo as he watched "...and stick the end in one nostril."

Elijah sat up sharply. "I stick this teapot up my nose? Are you fucking nuts?"

Head still canted over an imaginary sink, Viggo's eyes closely patiently. "Breathe calmly, like this, and it'll just drain out the other nostril. Then do it the other way." His head eased over to the left side, bliss settling peacefully on his features.

Elijah looked mortified. "This has been up _your_ nose?" 

"Elijah, it's clean," Viggo said, straightening up, his imaginary drainage now complete. "It hasn't been used in a while." 

Elijah laughed as he handed the pot back. "I don't think so, man. But thanks." Hands still extended, he sneezed into his biceps.

Viggo was already scrutinizing the next proof. "Consider it a gift. Now show me the samples."

***

It was later that night that Elijah stood in his apartment before the bathroom mirror wearing his Barney Rubble pajamas ("They're, like, so _vintage!_ " his sister had squealed two birthdays back), the ear of the little rose-colored pot curled around one finger. He looked at his miserable reflection, mouth agape, and tried once more to inhale through his dry swollen sinuses. It was no use. Sighing, he leaned over the sink and angled his head as Viggo had shown him. Then, snugging the pot's spout to one nostril, he tipped it and waited for the saline mixture to flow.

It burned a little because it was salt, and it reminded him of all the times he'd been dunked in the ocean by his older brother. Draining didn't go quite as smoothly as Viggo had implied – he was _really_ blocked – but he kept at it, blowing between pours, until the little pot was emptied. He dried his face and tried a few practice hauls, really drawing the air in, and he actually found, to his pleasant surprise, that while he wasn't completely unblocked, he had some degree of air flow that left a certain freshness. 

Damn, score one for the senior editing whacko. 

He brushed his teeth and popped his lenses, then slipped on his black Buddy Hollys. Flicking off the bathroom light, he headed for bed.

He needed to walk the few feet into the darkened room rather blindly because he preferred the soft bedside light to the bright overhead fixture. Carefully placing his water glass far enough in from the edge of the bedside table, he thumbed the little wheel on the electrical cord so that warm light haloed the bed.

"Hello, Elijah."

"OH SHIT! FUCK!" Elijah shrieked as he jumped backwards into his closet door. 

A dark-haired young man sat neatly against the headboard, naked to where the satin edge of the sheet lapped his waist and tucked beneath his folded hands. He winced at the collision. "Ouch. Sorry."

Heart jackrabbiting, Elijah's brain and lips rotated around the spin cycle a few times. "Www...www...www..." 

"Who am I?" the young man offered, brows raised helpfully. "Why am I here? What's my name?" 

"Unh," Elijah squeaked.

"Name's Orlando, but most people call me Orli, pleased to meet you." He leaned forward cheerily, a bright smile creasing his face, and stuck out his hand. 

Elijah shrank back even more, his fingers frantically reading the paint for an escape hatch.

"Sorry," Orlando soothed. "Everyone's always shocked at first." 

Elijah blinked. 

Repeatedly. 

Orlando smoothed the sheet hem tidily. "It takes people a bit of time to understand that it was _they_ who invited me in the first place. I like your pajamas, by the way. Very vintage." 

Elijah's panic abruptly geared down to a rumbling idle. _Invited?_

His brows drew together. 

_Vintage???_

Orlando's hands and face had launched into a flurry of motion. "I have thought of printing information on the bottom of the pot, but the space is so small, and then there's the business of languages: do I start with Hindi or English or Chinese because – believe me – if you wanna see Big-B Big-P Breathing Problems, you should go to China, but then the paper might get wet and, sorry, I always get nervous during introductions, oh, sorry, I say 'sorry' a lot..."

"STOP!" Elijah yelled, now that he'd put ten feet between them and the threat level had decidedly plummeted. "How do you know my name? How the hell did you get into my apartment? And I did NOT invite you!" 

"Technically," Orlando corrected him politely, "you did. That little powdery _poof_ when you dropped the Himalayan salt in what you called the 'teapot'? Moi." 

Elijah stared, bug-eyed. 

_Did he just say 'teapot'??_

Orlando waited patiently, his smile brightening in encouragement for Elijah to figure it out.

Elijah's eyes narrowed. "Viggo put you up to this, didn't he. Because the only person I said 'teapot' to was Viggo. Bastard!"

Orlando's eyes went all dreamy. "Viiiiiggo..." he sighed. 

Elijah had started to pace. "I don't know how, but you snuck in while I was in the bathroom..." 

"...such hands," Orlando shivered as his eyes drifted closed.

"...I'll bet you two even have a fucking camera in here somewhere!" 

"...such a tongue...." 

Elijah grimaced. "Ewww! We're talking Viggo here." 

Orli smiled and nodded. 

"I swear, I'll rip him a new one..." 

"But it's not what you think," Orlando explained, shaking his reverie. "He didn't really put me _up_ to this as much as he put me _in_ your hands..."

"...literally."

"...literally."

Elijah stopped and frowned at Orlando. "What the _fuck_ are you talking about?"

"He literally put me in your hands when he gave you the pot, Elijah. And I must say, _tut_ on you for all this naughty language."

"You're as nuts as he is. You're probably pipe buddies."

Orlando slipped his hand over his heart, the one – Elijah cursed himself for now observing – that beat behind a smoothly rounded, perfectly pebbled pectoral. "I have never, ever," Orlando swore solemnly, "partaken in anything like that."

"Not reassuring," Elijah waved. "But it's time to find your pants." 

"But I haven't helped you yet," Orlando whispered, looking stricken.

A finger pointed to the hallway. "Go."

Orlando silently slipped out the other side of the bed. He came around the end and stood there, puppy eyes glistening. "Please..."

It was hard enough for Elijah – all five and a half feet of him in horn rims and vintage Bedrock flannel – to muster his most sinister, don't-mess-with me expression. Especially when six feet of bronzed, buffed, shaggy, lean, long-limbed, pleading, naked, dewy-eyed and (verified by a quick glance) _equipped_ intruder politely begged for permission to return to his bed. With the expressed intention of being helpful. 

Like, twist his arm already. 

Elijah crawled between the sheets, warily eyeing Orlando. "Maybe you should at least get dressed."

Orlando wrung his hands. "But I don't _come_ with clothes."

Elijah swallowed.

"What I mean to say is, I'm a night-time neti, Elijah. We don't wear clothes."

Elijah sighed. "You just don't give up, do you?"

"I'll give up whatever you want," Orlando promised hopefully, cluelessly. "Anything to help you breathe better."

At the mention of his sinuses, Elijah realized just how much mouth breathing he'd been doing. And now that he wasn't quite so scared shitless, maybe he _could_ show a little more hospitality, especially if his senior supervisor had gone to all this trouble to play a prank. 

"All right," he said, folding back the bedding on Orlando's side of the bed. "We can talk a little. But you have to stay over there." He pointed to the far edge of the mattress.

Orlando looked as if all his Christmases had just arrived – _if there is a Christmas in neti Nuttyland,_ Elijah noted. But as Orlando settled against the headboard and turned to Elijah with the most bewilderingly innocent smile, Elijah's thoughts of lunacy and payback dissolved like...well, like a _poof_ above a little rose-hued pot. 

"Thank you," Orlando breathed voluptuously.

Elijah stared at the little gap between Orlando's upper and lower lips where they didn't quite meet. 

"I will never tell Viggo anything, ever," Orlando whispered. "Not even if you give me back to him."

Elijah frowned and looked into Orlando's eyes.

"I know," Orlando said. "I should shut up about all that stuff."

Elijah nodded, and his eyes drifted back down to the mysteriously enchanting gap. He cleared his throat. "So, Orli, are you, like, a physio therapist for...nasal ailments?"

"Yeah, kind of." Orlando slid a little lower so that his face was on level with Elijah's. 

"You been doing this long?"

"Yeah, since at least the fourth...yeah, a really long time."

"You any good?" 

"I'm 100% successful. You are very lucky that Viggo was so thoughtful, Elijah."

Elijah harrumphed. "So humor me. If you really came out of a pot while I was there with it the whole time, how did you get from the bathroom to my bedroom?"

Orli's gap grew into a maddeningly enchanting grin. "Shut your eyes for a moment."

Elijah closed his eyes. When Orlando didn't say anything, he opened them again.

To find himself absolutely alone.

He jerked upright and looked around the room. He pulled back the bedding where Orlando had been, but there was only a rumpled dip in the mattress. He leaned across it to the far side of the bed and looked down onto the floor. Just in case Orlando had some weird Spiderman thing going, he looked up. Then he flipped onto his stomach and hung over his own side of the bed, but there was no room under the box spring anyway. He pushed himself back up.

And came face to face with a grinning Orlando, still leaning against the pillow.

"STOP _DOING_ THAT!!" Elijah shrieked, jumping backwards – 

– where he teetered on the edge of the bed, his arm pinwheeling – 

– so that Orlando had to quickly reach for him, slipping a hand around Elijah's waist and snugging him forward.

Elijah thought Orli was terribly strong. And surprisingly gentle. 

For a neti. 

Whatever the hell a neti was.

"Sorry," Orlando murmured, smoothing the flannel over Elijah's hip and scrunching himself down the pillow so that he was closer. He chewed his lip for apologizing yet again.

"'S'okay," Elijah replied. 

It was hard for Elijah to concentrate on anything with Orlando's thumb rubbing a little circle over Barney Rubble on his hip and liquid chocolate eyes furrowing with concern over him. "Orli?"

"Yeah."

"Don't disappear anymore. I get that you're different."

"Okay."

They stared at each other for a several long moments, the room so quiet that the hum of the bedside clock loomed loud. 

"You're still pretty plugged up," Orlando eventually observed from the little puffs of breath falling from Elijah's mouth. He reached and lifted Elijah's glasses from his face, folding the arms against the mattress and stretching to place them on the bedstand. 

Elijah could only stare as Orlando settled around him again. Neti or not, he smelled awfully good. 

"Can I, um, do something that will help you breathe a little easier?" Orlando inched closer.

"Okay." 

Orlando dipped forward and licked Elijah's lips, just a little. "You taste minty," he said, apparently liking the flavour because he dipped forward and licked again. And then again.

"Orli?"

"Yeah?"

"Is that how netis kiss?"

Orlando frowned. "No, that's how we lick. We kiss, well, like this." He hovered nearer and brushed his lips against Elijah's, nuzzling a little, and nibbling a bit, and dipping his tongue between Elijah's lips so that he could slide it hither and yon an awful lot. 

For Elijah, all this oral reconnoitering was nearly enough to distract a fellow, except for the fact that down on his hip, whatever Orlando had been doing with his thumb on Barney Rubble had morphed into something a lot more distracting. 

For starters, Orlando's hand, all warm and large and firm, had somehow slipped beneath the hem of Elijah's pajama top and around to his back where it splayed just above the waistband of his pajama bottoms. And each individual finger pad and palm muscle and the mound at the base of his thumb – well, that hand was tilting and molding Elijah's lower half into just the right axis and angle for a bit of full frontal flannel frottage. 

All of which made Elijah feel more than a little panicky. 

Lips still in full neti lockdown, he immediately clutched Orlando's biceps to push him away. However, between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act fell a [shadow](http://www.geocities.com/Paris/LeftBank/9824/hollow.html), and somehow, Elijah didn't think this was what T.S. Eliot had in mind. What was born in resistance quickly became something else altogether. Something really hot and hungry. He uttered a nasty, desperate little sound.

Orlando abruptly leaned back. "Are you okay, Elijah?" 

"Nghhhhhhh," Elijah ground out, eyes closed and hips pivoting, his mouth awaiting the return of the neti.

"Right," Orlando determined and descended, plundering anew, his kisses wet and buttery and far too rich for Elijah's diet. 

Elijah squirmed beneath him, quickly losing all sense of propriety given that Orlando was a stranger, possibly a neti, and potentially a prank. None of that seemed to matter anymore. What mattered – indeed, what was totally riveting – was the wonderful lightness he felt despite Orlando's considerable weight and breadth and length bearing down on him. His insides felt all glittery and floaty, as if they were – how bizarre was this! – as if they were stardust. For a brief moment, he considered that the quartz he'd dissolved was less Himalayan and more Columbian, if one followed – but that moment was gone before it could even take root. All he knew was that Orlando's kisses seemed to reach right inside him, right down to every finger tip and toe tip and oh, oh, _that_ tip too, and the next thing he knew he coming, and coming...

Only...

..not. 

Without being too explicit, not with any resulting physical evidence, anyway. 

Except maybe a perplexing near-invisible shimmer that hung in the air.

Orlando stopped kissing him, watching him closely. 

Elijah could only stare at the ceiling.

"What just happened?" he asked.

"You suspirated," Orli whispered, rapturous.

"Fuck."

"Yes."

There was a pause. "What's suspirating?"

"It's like what you'd call an orgasm, but not...entirely."

"It felt entirely."

"Oh, I know," Orli agreed enthusiastically. 

"Maybe, even, a little better."

"I _know_."

"But," Elijah scrunched up and looked down his chest. "Nothing... _happened_."

"Tidy, yeah?"

"...."

"When you suspirate, you just _ffftz_."

"The fuck?"

"Like letting your breath go."

"That's too weird."

"But enjoyable."

"Oh, fuck yeah."

"Elijah." Orlando blew a wayward strand of hair that had fallen across Elijah's brow. "How's your breathing?"

Elijah went still. He slowly inhaled a lungful -- cleanly, clearly, fully, deeply. A smile grew into a full grin. "That's freakishly amazing," he declared.

"It comes with suspirating."

"No way." His grin got really big. 

Orlando pursed his lips and nodded, looking very pleased with himself.

"Orli?"

"Yeah."

"Why on earth would Viggo give you away?"

"He accidentally forgot to pack me once before a business trip. Had to buy himself another neti pot."

"Oh, I'm sorry, man. That sucks."

"Actually, Viggo's breathing got even better with his new neti, Bean. Bean's a little saltier. Made all the difference."

Elijah considered this, but still. "Aren't you sad?" he asked. "You know, aren't you feeling kinda...rejected?"

"Nah. Every once in a while, Viggo brings us both out, Bean for the left nostril, me for the right. A little drawer downtime afterwards is actually welcome." He petted Elijah's flannel collar, then pulled him in for a little lick. "Besides, he'd had me in his desk during your last few meetings with him so I could check you out."

"You’re kidding me." 

Orli dropped his eyes, his cheeks flaming. "Your sneezes were the sexiest sounds I'd heard in...eons. They nearly cracked my pot."

"No shit."

"Yeah."

Elijah snuggled closer, drawing the scent of Orlando over refreshened membranes, down, down, deep inside to perky flagella and plump cilia. Already, he knew he'd be sleeping the sleep of the dead. "Orli," he smiled. "Kill the lights, will you?" 

Wrapping his arms around Elijah and rubbing his chin across the crown of Elijah's head, Orlando smiled at the lamp and winked.


End file.
